Asynchronous Task Containers

A few years ago I posted about using Action delegates to create logical containers to encapsulate functionality. This technique is a good example of DRY programming, and it is very useful in scenarios where you are performing similar operations with different parameters such as calling a database or service.

iTextSharp hates your HTML5

When it comes to PDF generation in .Net there aren't many open source projects to choose from, so by default many people choose the most popular community driven project, iTextSharp. With a relatively easy learning curve and decent API, iTextSharp can address most simple scenarios for generating PDF's, and with a little more effort can render even more complex PDF's as well. iTextSharp has been essentially free using the LGPL license, but with the introduction of version 5, the AGPL license has clouded the waters a bit.

This post addresses a potential gotcha when using the iTextSharp XmlWorker to render HTML5 to PDF's.

An argument for using WebGrease instead of the ASP.Net Web OptimizationFramework

ASP.Net Web Optimization was introduced to ease the minification and bundling of JavaScript and CSS files within your project. It's available out of the box with any new project that uses the MVC 4 project templates. In your App_Start folder, there's a file called BundleConfig where you configure what files should be minified and bundled into one file. Minification and bundling are a good thing of course, because they reduce the number of requests the browser has to make in order to retrieve the resources it needs to render a page, and they reduce the size of those resources.

But, what if you have an MVC 3 or WebForms project? What do you do? There are plenty of tutorials out there that will walk you through adding the ASP.Net Web Optimization NuGet package to your project, and the steps that it will take to get your project configured. This post however takes a different approach. What if we don't use the ASP.Net Web Optimization package at all... what if we just use WebGrease instead?

Installing Ghost on Ubuntu 14

I've been wanting to check out Ghost for a while now, and over the weekend I decided to give it a whirl. I fired up a new VM and installed the latest version of Ubuntu, downloaded the source from the Ghost.org site, and followed the simple installation procedure. And that's about as far as I got.

Unfortunately, something within the latest release of 'buntu is not configured correctly to just install and go. After some Googlin' I found Jinyu Liu's post about setting up Ghost, and he found the magic.

Run the following:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/node node /usr/bin/nodejs 10

It will fix the Node symbolic link, which is apparently not correct.

After running that, everything installed just as described on the Ghost.org site, and I had a new blog up and running in minutes.

SSRS Deployment Center

I recently worked on an enterprise project that involved deploying SSRS reports and data sources to different environments throughout the organization. SSRS reports have always lacked proper deployment tooling compared to other project types. The RS.EXE deployment tool from Microsoft makes it possible to create scripted deployments, but it's too complex for the average business user. And although it's possible to use it in conjunction with automated builds, it is not as easy as it should be. Because of this I created a set of GUI and command line tools called the SSRS Deployment Center that will hopefully ease future SSRS report deployments.

I've put the project onto CodePlex, so if your in need of a set of tools to make report deployments easier, check it out here:

https://ssrsdeploymentcenter.codeplex.com/

The CodePlex site has all of the information you need to download, configure and run the tools.